The Twelve Days of (learning how to) Christmas
by conventionalfallacy
Summary: Rebekah's just a little bit alone and Jeremy's just a little bit not okay with that. This is how you start. (For Olivia: thecunningcock/petrovasaurs. But the rest of you can read it too if you like.)


_This is a Christmas present for Olivia (thecunningcock/rebekahstwat/petrovasaurs) because I can't write Kanna to save my life, but I can do Jerbekah. Maybe. That's up to her to decide._

_Jerbekah, K+ because sometimes fluff happens._

* * *

**The Twelve Days of (learning how to) Christmas**

_One._

The first day is an accident.

She's pissed at something Elena did (for anyone who wasn't listening, she doesn't like Elena very much), so she wants to come bitch at her. Or throw her daylight ring down a storm drain. Some kind of harmless antagonism towards the girl she likes only marginally better as a vampire. The thing is, likes marginally better than unadulterated loathing is still hates. And no, she's not going to apologize. For anything. She was here first. Like a thousand years first.

Elena's not around, though. She can tell as soon as she gets near the house. And she would have just turned around and gone home, but it's snowy and Jeremy Gilbert is outside. Of course, he's bundled up. She still can't think of any reason for him to be spending his time out of the house if he doesn't have to when it's fucking freezing. Even her undead vampire body knows that.

Rebekah leans into one hip, her hands in her pockets, and watches the boy's back from the end of the walkway. She can come closer, but she's just fine back here. She doesn't really want to talk to him or anything. There's no way to say "I'm pissed at your sister for something that's technically trivial but I want a reason to keep hating her and hurting her" nicely.

She's just about to leave, so she jumps – actually honest-to-god startles – when Jeremy speaks. "I know you're there, you know. I do have a stake on me, so you might want to tell me what you're doing."

The absurdity of it shakes a laugh from Rebekah. "As if you could kill me."

He turns, holding a green mess that looks kind of like barbed wire in his hands. "Rebekah. Elena's out." Suspicious brown eyes look her up and down, searching for her motives.

"Where is she?"

"Why would I tell you?" He raises his eyebrows. "Besides, she's with her boyfriend, so I really don't want to think about where she is or what she's doing."

Pushing her hands further into her pockets, Rebekah leans back again. This is her cue to leave. She definitely knows when she's not wanted. She's had plenty of time to learn that from Nik. But for some reason, she blurts a question. "What are you doing?"

Jeremy looks back at her. He holds up his bundle as though the answer should be obvious. "Untangling lights." She raises an eyebrow. "…Christmas decorations?"

"Oh." Of course. Before she can make herself feel any more stupid, Rebekah leaves.

_Two._

He doesn't expect to look out the window and see her.

Two days later, she's skulking at the end of their drive again. He might find it creepy, but for a moment he caught her eye and saw vulnerability. It's just a gut instinct, but Jeremy thinks Rebekah isn't here to hurt anyone.

"Elena?"

"Mhm?" The kitchen glows with warm light and warmer laughter, his sister and her friends holed up having some kind of girl powwow. They've been drinking and making cookies and throwing chocolate chips at each other for the last two hours.

"Are you going to use all the candy canes?"

"Uh." She leans around the kitchen door, looking at him curiously. "I wasn't planning to. I mean, we got three boxes of them. Why?" They've always used them as ornaments.

"Can I have one?" He isn't sure if vampires like mint, but the other day Elena and Damon were both eating one candy cane at the same time, so despite how incredibly disgusting that was to witness, he considers it a pretty good indication.

Elena shrugs, though he can tell she's still confused. "Sure." Someone tosses her one, and she throws it to him. "That all?"

Nodding, Jeremy's already moving towards the door, jamming his feet in his boots and throwing it open as soon as Elena returns to her private party. She'll probably ask him about this later, but for the moment she doesn't care and he's acting on pure impulse.

Rebekah vanished the moment he came outside, but something tells him she's still around. "Rebekah?" Nothing. "Hey! Rebekah!"

In a second, she's standing in front of him, blonde hair still floating back around her shoulders after the speed of her movement. She smells soft. Like cherries, maybe. Or vanilla. Something surprising. "You're going to disturb the entire neighborhood if you yell like that."

"And that bothers you?" Before she can answer, he holds out the candy cane. "Here."

Rebekah eyes it like it's a bomb, rather than a gift of sorts. "Why?"

Jeremy just shrugs. He doesn't really know. But when he saw her standing out there by herself, he wanted her to know someone saw her. "It's another Christmas thing."

He can feel her eyes on him all the way back into the house.

_Three._

She is _not_ going back to the Gilbert house. She's not curious what's going on there now, and she's also not turning her still-wrapped candy cane over and over in her fingers, wondering what it's even supposed to mean. In her entire life, no one's ever done something so senseless but kind for her. She can't work it out.

Her personal puzzle is so absorbing that she doesn't realize there's someone outside the house until they're a little too close for comfort. A creeping visitor while Nik's out? There's nothing to be afraid of, but she doesn't like it. Setting down her candy cane (_just_ because it's inconvenient, not because she cares if something happens to it), Rebekah flashes to her yard, sliding to an abrupt and confused halt when she realizes exactly who's outside her house.

Jeremy Gilbert stands on her lawn, bundled up in a parka with his back to her, doing something to their trees. If he ruins the landscaping, she isn't sure who will kill him first, Nik or Elijah. At least she gets to be the one questioning his motives this time. "What are you doing there?"

Jeremy spins, but doesn't look the least bit surprised to see her. "Rebekah." He smiles. He actually smiles, and she's quite sure he's gone mad. "How are you?"

How on earth is she supposed to respond to a question like that? As though they're in a supermarket and have run into each other, not on her front lawn where he's intruding and touching her property like he owns it. "Well enough. What are you _doing_, though?"

Holding up his left hand, he shakes the strings he's clutching, making whatever's on the ends of them dance. It's a lot of white and silver, and she's a little too busy staring at him like he's crazy to figure out exactly what he has. "I figured you all don't decorate for Christmas. So I brought you some general holiday stuff." Completely presuming that she'll let him continue, Jeremy turns back to the trees, tying on another string. When he steps back, she sees that there are paper snowflakes hanging innocently from her plants.

"You know they're going to get ruined, right? The snow will soak them through."

He shrugs, looking over his shoulder at her with a grin. "That's okay. They weren't meant to last forever anyway. And maybe it's better they get wrecked before one of your brothers sees them."

She makes a small noise of assent and turns away, back towards her home. Even though she leaves, he doesn't go until he's put all of his snowflakes up. She knows. She watches him from an upstairs window the entire time. When Jeremy finally leaves, Rebekah sneaks downstairs and outside the house, making sure no one's watching her. Carefully, she gathers up each of the snowflakes, bringing them inside to sit on her desk with her candy cane. She doesn't want to watch them get destroyed.

_Four._

He doesn't know what he's doing.

Elena has asked him at least three times what's going on, and even Damon sat him down and told him it's a terrible idea to fuck with an Original. The thing is, he's not fucking with her in any sense of the word. There's nothing Jeremy wants from Rebekah. He knows she killed Elena. He knows Elena has reason to hate her. But when everyone you know has killed someone, you can really only hold the permanent deaths against them. He's forgiven Damon.

It's her because he saw her processing Christmas traditions as a third party and realized that she had nothing to draw on. For someone who values family so much, she is totally without that sense of it that's supposed to just come with the holidays. Even if it's just for one year, he thinks she should have those memories.

That's how he comes up with the Advent Calendar. Since she grew up in a time when werewolves ripping people apart was a hazard of day-to-day life, he assumes that she's never actually had an Advent Calendar. So he goes out and buys one.

It's relatively large, compared to some of the ones with little shaped pockets just big enough for a chocolate. Not huge, but he assumes that chocolate isn't that interesting to vampires, so he empties it out. Places all the chocolate in a single pile on the kitchen table and sets to work filling it with other things. Which leads to the question "how do you surprise someone who's seen everything?" Jeremy doesn't know. He hasn't seen close to everything.

The look Damon gives him when he asks pierces right through his skin. "You tell her the truth," Damon says. "People who have seen everything have seen endless lies. You always catch them off guard with the truth." Jeremy doesn't know what that means. It makes less than no sense to him, but when he catches sight of Damon's face as Elena comes up behind him and presses her hands over his eyes, he thinks he starts to get it.

Half of the boxes have little slips of paper in them. Some are written on, or drawn on, or shaped. The smallest pinecone he could possibly find is in another. Little ornaments, rocks he's kept in his room since he was younger, anything he can fit in the Advent Calendar goes in until there are twenty-five days to try and surprise an Original Vampire.

He places a note on it and brings it to her front door before getting the heck away, hoping Klaus won't be the one who comes to the door, because he'd probably destroy it. Jeremy watches using a pair of binoculars so Rebekah doesn't see him (no, it's not creepy!).

She opens the door with her hair wet. She looks younger, more innocent like that. As though she's just a girl pretending to be immortal and terrifying, and sometimes she has to take her mask off. She looks around suspiciously before picking up the package, but when she carries it inside, Jeremy can't help but smile.

_Five._

She's gathering pieces of Jeremy Gilbert in her bedroom, and of all the things that are not okay, this definitely ranks. What would Nik say if he knew? It's the eighth morning of December and she's rolling the little carved turquoise cat that was in today's box between her fingers. Where Jeremy found such a thing, she has no idea. The animal's curled up, nose tip to tail and as content as it is possible for anyone or anything to be. She can't help but keep petting it until it's warm from her hands.

What is she doing? Why is she letting this boy play "normal" with her, when they are both anything but? With a disgusted scoff at herself, Rebekah lets her hair loose from its braid and yanks her nightgown over her head, throwing it to the floor and changing into a pair of jeans and a form-fitting sweater. She can't be seen as too impervious to cold. She's going out today, she resolves, and she won't think any more about Jeremy Gilbert and the Advent Calendar that makes no sense.

Still, she slips the cat in her pocket.

As soon as she gets inside to get coffee, she decides that she's leaving the cat at home in the future. Doesn't matter if she likes it, it's probably some kind of possessed homing device, leading her straight to Jeremy Gilbert or him straight to her. It's a Monday morning and he should be on his way to school, not getting coffee exactly as she goes to get some. He can make coffee at home! Technically, so can she, but Control-Freak-Niklaus disapproves, probably just because he can.

Worst of all, Jeremy smiles at her as though he's happy to see her, as though he could possibly see her as anything other than "the psychotic bitch who tried to kill my sister", which is of course impossible. She doesn't know what he's playing at, but she remembers the concept of "Klaus bait" all too well, and she refuses to give anyone cause to mock her again by trusting him.

"Morning, Rebekah."

"Shouldn't you be on your way to school?"

If he's offended by her brusqueness, he doesn't show it. "We have a late start today. Because of all the snow. So I'm trying to actually make it through all of my classes awake." Jeremy grins. He's self-possessed now. Not the lost post-punk kid that he was when she first encountered him. "What about you?"

"I'm raising my blood pressure." It's not a joke, and that's what makes it funny. She may not really feel the cold, but when temperatures get this low, blood starts to move more sluggishly through her veins, shutting her down like a freezing lizard.

He gets his coffee and she can smell the hint of caramel even from where she stands. He smiles at her before he leaves. "I'll see you later, Rebekah." He means it.

_Six._

He can tell she's probably the kind who complains about Christmas music.

If something hurts Rebekah, or confuses her, or makes her feel left out, she doesn't like it. He suspects that Christmas music makes her feel left out both culturally and personally. It must be hard, carrying the weight of centuries like they're barely twenty-some years. She probably forgets sometimes that it's okay to just enjoy silly things.

To that end, he makes her a mix tape. Not a mix tape mix tape, because even though if anyone would own a cassette player, it would be the Mikaelsons, he sure as hell doesn't have any cassettes. Plus, it's not so much in the vein of her trying out music he likes. More like him introducing her to how Christmas works, whether or not she wants it.

The variety of Christmas music on her CD runs the gamut from Celtic chants he doesn't understand to pop. She won't be able to play it through the house like he and Elena do, like their parents always did, but something is better than nothing. She can play it on her laptop. She has more self-preservation instincts than to play anything with any kind of reference to "Santa Claus" while Klaus is in the vicinity.

He's about two thirds of the way through making it when the hair prickles at the back of his neck and he can't stop himself from glancing out the window, certain that someone's watching him. For a moment, he doesn't see anything. She's wearing a white parka and with the lightness of her hair, he almost misses her.

Unthinkingly, he opens his window, leaning out and calling down to her. "Rebekah!"

She jerks her head up, staring at him. "Jeremy." It's clear that she didn't expect him to be home. He smiles. She may not realize it, but it's the first time she's called him by his name.

"Hang on a second. I'm coming down," he calls. It's a little like Romeo and Juliet gone backwards. Grabbing his laptop, Jer tucks it under his arm and thunders down the stairs, stopping in the kitchen to make coffee for Rebekah and tea for himself (he kind of thinks that she might be gone once he get out).

But she's still there, standing on the porch. They both know he can't let her in. Elena's putting up with this, but she wouldn't be able to deal with Rebekah having free access to their house. Also, Damon might snap his neck. On purpose this time.

"Here." Jeremy hands her a cup of coffee, and her eyes widen in surprise.

"Thanks."

They sit together on the porch until Jeremy's finished with the CD. He hands it to her and tells her he's going to put his laptop in his room. When he gets back out, she's gone.

_Seven._

This time, he knocks on the front door. Rebekah's beginning to wonder exactly where this is going, or where it will stop. Neither she nor Jeremy seem able to cut it off unassisted. Considering that it's nine in the morning on Saturday and he's standing on the Original vampires' front steps, she can't help but admire his bravery, even when gaping at his insanity. Especially once she hears Nik moving to open the door and realizes she can't stop him in time. Which means all she can do is pray that he doesn't hurt Jeremy.

"Little Gilbert. What a surprise to see you here without your sister. Why did she send you?" Nik speaks easily. Good. He's not going to kill Jeremy without a reason.

"She didn't." Even in front of her brother, the psychopath, Jeremy's voice remains steady. "I'm here to pick up Rebekah."

"Rebekah?" There's a warning edge in Nik's voice now, and Rebekah grips her windowsill until the wood snaps off. Oops. "What do you want with my sister?"

"We're getting a Christmas tree."

Nik doesn't get it. She can tell from his silence that he doesn't get it, and she wants to throw her hands up in the air and yell for him to go ask Caroline because if anyone can explain to him why an Original would want to go get a Christmas tree, it would be her. Not that Rebekah knew this was on the plans for the day. She certainly won't tell Nik that part.

"Rebekah! There's a Gilbert for you!"

She sighs with relief and clatters down the stairs, her heeled boots clopping like horse hooves. When Jeremy's eyes fall on her, a smile breaks across his face. "Are you sure you're dressed warmly enough?"

She tosses her hair. "I don't get cold."

"I meant warmly enough that no one will pick you out as a vampire and try to stake you. Nothing ruins Christmas tree shopping like a vampire hunt."

"You would know," Rebekah quips, but she pulls on a fleece anyway before pulling Jeremy out of the house and away from Nik's watchful gaze. It's only once they're in the moving car that she turns to him and asks the question that's been burning on her tongue since his hand first hit her door. "Why are you taking me?"

"It's what people do at Christmas," he explains. "Get trees. And since we're doing Christmas…"

_They're_ doing Christmas. Oh. Despite the cold out, she suddenly feels warm.

_Eight._

"I don't see what this has to do with Christmas."

They're easily the oldest people in the park who are actually playing and not watching kids (which isn't that difficult, considering no one wants to be outside in this much snow). Well, Rebekah's the oldest of anyone besides her brothers ever, but he means physically. She's got her hair in a loose braid and she's all bundled up and if she wanted to, she could easily model in some kind of winter fashion magazine and look eighteen, not one thousand and some.

"Nothing really," he admits. "It's more of a winter thing than a Christmas thing. It's just fun. Haven't you ever played in the snow?"

"Of course I have!" The pitch of her voice rises indignantly. "But snow was also incredibly cold when I was young."

Jeremy laughs. "I think it's still cold, Rebekah."

"Not as cold as when all you have to protect yourself from it is an extra fur. _If_ you're lucky. Snowballs…" she leans in dramatically, "could be killers."

With timing too perfect to resist, Jeremy pushes the snowball he's been hiding in his hand towards Rebekah's face. She's a vampire, so of course she ducks before he can hit her, but ice flecks spatter across her cheek, down her neck and inside her jacket. "You're trying to kill me!" Her voice is playfully indignant, so different from the predatory Rebekah he's known.

"I_ am_ a hunter," Jeremy justifies, whirling and running off as she scoops up a handful of snow. It hits him squarely in the back of the head, giving him a new frosted look. "Ow!"

"Don't start a battle you can't finish." There's vampire wildness in her eyes, spreading around them, and he really hopes no one's paying attention because she no longer looks quite human and it's stirring up his instincts like a storm.

The snowball fight is definitely a fight. They monopolize the play structure as soon as she jumps on the bridge, opening it up for him to chase her. He tries to stay away from children, but it's hard when they're barely managing to appear human with the ferocity of their play.

Just for a second, he thinks he's losing it. She's a vampire, she's so very vampire, and he knows what he is and he knows he wants to hurt her. It would be so very easy to snap off the branch of a tree and ram it through her, hurt her so he can do something more permanent. Rebekah grinds snow in his face and he growls. He shakes his head and his eyes clear and he catches hers. They're bright and happy. Rebekah is not a vampire right now; she's a girl who somehow feels safe. Jeremy choses the detour.

_Nine._

She's not sure if she's worth his time and effort. She's prickly and complicated and her family situation could fairly be described as "freaky bordering on incestuous". But she's come to the rather uncomfortable realization that she _wants_ to be worth it. Both his time and his effort. She's still wary, which she thinks is fair considering the numerous instances of "Klaus bait" (come to think of it, why have they never tried a reverse gambit where they use Klaus as "Caroline bait"?) but Jeremy Gilbert has the uncanny ability to worm his way beneath people's armor.

So she texts him, because as brash and up front as she is when she's certain she'll get what she wants, she's less so when she's actually risking something. Everything thus far has been his idea, on his terms. Rebekah's not sure if it's more frightening that he might say yes or that he might say no.

That morning, she lounges on the couch like she doesn't care about anything, much less the little brothers of doppelganger vampires. She sits on the couch and paints her nails because she can, because nail polish is pretty, and blatantly ignores the way Elijah keeps glancing at her. She's not going to spill on his furniture, so he can stop worrying!

When he knocks on the door, she makes sure she's the one to open it. She smiles, purposefully makes no eye contact with her brothers, and invites him in, leading him to the kitchen as if all this is an everyday occurrence. In addition to the ingredients she got, there are several blood bags on the counter. Jeremy looks at them askance.

"What are you going to need _those_ for?"

Rebekah frowns. True, she's never made cookies before, but she thinks she has the general idea down. "You put water in cookies, right? So if you just replace blood with water, you have blood cookies."

Though he laughs, Jeremy doesn't tell her not to. He just says, "I've never tried it. But let's make half of them the normal way, alright?"

Klaus, Elijah, and Kol each stop by to stare into the kitchen for a minute or so at least once that afternoon. Rebekah is annoyed, but she can tell Jeremy's just trying to ignore them, even though he twitches every time, as though he can sense them now. He still does his best to make the whole thing fun for her, which she doesn't quite understand. Why? Why is it that he just laughs when she accidentally sprays a bit of blood on him while measuring, and why is it that he brought cutters shaped like snowmen and people? (She takes a macabre pleasure in cutting most of the blood dough into human forms).

When the cookies come out, hers appear odd, to say the least. Maybe the extra proteins and such were a bad idea. Even though Jeremy's are perfect, even though hers are flavored with people, he bites the arm of one of her men before trying his own. He makes a face, but she thinks they're alright and she realizes that she's happy.

_Ten._

She shows up at his door and Elena opens it. "Jeremy?"

He clatters down the stairs, wondering what's wrong until he catches sight of her standing in the doorway. There's a thin braid behind her ear and a mess of Christmas lights in her hands, and she's looking between him and his sister as if to ask for help.

"Bekah?" He doesn't notice that the nickname's slipped out of his mouth until Elena turns to frown at him. Rebekah too seems to have noticed it, but she doesn't show any indication of having a problem.

"Nik and 'Lijah won't let me put nails in the wall." She holds her lights out towards him, hands carefully not crossing the threshold. "Can you help me hang these?"

"One second." He races back upstairs to throw on his outdoor clothes and jam his feet into his boots, hoping Elena and Rebekah won't kill each other while he's gone. His sister seems to have retreated somewhere else, because Rebekah's the only one there when he gets down, still standing in the doorway. Waiting for him.

He ends up being the one to put up the lights. She wants to help, but she's not quite sure how so she sits on her desk with her knees half-drawn up to her chest, watching him. He can feel her eyes on his back when he's not facing her, but she looks away when he does.

They're making silly conversation, but she's always the first to drop it. Jeremy wonders what she's afraid of. He's doing his best, but maybe he misjudged. Maybe Rebekah didn't just need someone to teach her but the kind of support only her brothers can give.

When he only has a few lengths of lights left, her room glows. Little white buds blossom all over the walls, softening everything around them. He moves as though to hang them up, but when he walks behind her he loops them over her arms, twisting Christmas lights around her body. "Don't move," he warns when it looks like she's going to struggle. "You'll break them."

Rebekah goes very still. She looks down at herself, ringed in light as she is, then meets his eyes. There's hurt in hers, betrayal. "Why did you do that?"

Jeremy shakes his head. He's not going to say that Rebekah's not smart, because she is, very, but she's also been hurt and so she got this one wrong. "It's Christmas," he explains. "You got it. So it got you."

She pauses for a moment, and then she just starts laughing. She can barely move for fear of wrecking her lights and can't really keep her balance so Jeremy grabs her waist to keep her upright but he's laughing too and it doesn't really matter that they're being childish because they're doing Christmas. Together, in a way she'll be able to keep with her for when she wants to remember it. That's what he wanted.

_Eleven._

He takes her hand and drags her out in the snow.

It's the middle of the night and they've been lying on her bedroom floor looking up at her lights for a good six hours now. That's the only decoration in her room except for the candy cane and the snowflakes, but she hid those before he came over. She doesn't need him knowing that she wanted to keep those parts of this past month, or that the things in his Advent Calendar are horribly creased from too much reading or tucked into her pockets so she always has one.

For once she seems to have done something right. She wishes she knew exactly what so that she could replicate it, because she always does everything wrong. And this boy's here acting like she's not totally fucking up. So yeah, it's a feeling she'd like to repeat.

"Come on," Jeremy encourages. She knows her brothers are listening, that they've been listening in all afternoon. She wishes she could tell them to shove their curiosity, but she's not entirely convinced Jeremy won't vanish if she leaves him for even a moment.

"What are we doing?" That seems to be her refrain with him. Of course, with him there's no murder or mayhem or public appearances, so it's all a little bit outside her comfort zone.

Abruptly, Jeremy pulls her down beside him in the snow. She could stay standing but she falls on her ass, even though she knows her jeans will get soaked through. "What _are_ you doing?" she demands when he flops down on his back. She's not going quite that far yet.

He doesn't say anything, his eyes wide open and staring at the sky in a way eerily similar to a corpse. Just to get him to talk, she lays back, watching with him, waiting for something spectacular. "Those are the original Christmas lights."

"What?" She's thinking of her family, and there are no such thing as vampire Christmas lights.

"The stars. They're the first Christmas lights, aren't they?"

"Oh." He's moving beside her, making some kind of scraping noise, and she turns her head to watch only to see Jeremy moving his arms and legs like he wants to swim. She stares until he stands, brushing himself off as best he can.

"Your turn. Make a snow angel."

She doesn't want to. It's cold and wet and childish, but he's watching her so she spreads her arms and swims too. When she stands, there are two angels in the snow, watching the stars. Jeremy smiles at her and holds out his hand to take her back inside. Neither of them notices, but behind them the angels' wings touch.

_Twelve._

He's alone in the house.

It's Christmas Eve and Damon and Elena are both out of the house. Read: off having Christmas sex somewhere so that tomorrow they can all spend the day together in a platonic way. Sometimes it's really obnoxious that his only family is dating because they get all public display of affectionate when he really just wants to hang out normally. But they're both happy, and he can't hold that against them even if it's sometimes uncomfortable.

Jeremy sits in the living room with his sketch pad, drawing the Christmas tree. He's had enough of monsters. When your life is normal, it's fun to draw the insane. But when your life is mad, mundane starts to seem incredibly appealing. It's not the best Christmas Eve he could ever have imagined, but he doesn't mind too much. Elena's happy and he's content. Compared to some other Christmases they've had the past few years, everything is completely okay.

He almost jumps out of his skin when someone knocks on the door. It's ten pm on Christmas Eve and there's no reason for anyone to be visiting unless they want to kill Elena, Damon, or him. The moment after he thinks that Jeremy realizes how completely the last few years have ruined him. When a knock on the door makes him tense for some kind of home invasion, he can feel pretty confident that he's too paranoid.

He still picks up a stake before going to the front door. Peering through the peephole, he catches sight of a blonde head dusted with snow and the superficially irritated expression of the only Original vampiress. Jeremy drops his weapon without a second thought. At some point in the past twenty-four days, he began to trust Rebekah implicitly. He unlocks the door in a hurry (she can probably hear his heartbeat, and he doesn't want her to go if she thinks he's hiding from her).

"Rebekah."

"Jeremy." Her eyes are about as wide and as blue as it is humanly (or inhumanly) possible for eyes to be. "I-"

"Come in."

Rebekah freezes, staring between him and the door that he just pulled wide enough for her to step through. "What?"

"I just invited you in." He's taking the most enormous risk ever, allowing her into his home. There's no way to tell her to get out now, or to say that she's not permitted back inside. This is her space too now, and Rebekah steps almost reverently over the lintel, as though she can't quite believe that he's done it, as though waiting for the inevitable kickback. It doesn't come.

She smiles at him with complete sincerity and for a moment he's blinded. "Here."

"Huh?" He's still a little off kilter (can you blame him? He just invited an Original vampire into his house) so he doesn't quite process until Rebekah shoves a present into his hands.

"It's a Christmas present." And now she looks defensive. As though he'd reject it. Reject her.

"Thank you." Jeremy reaches out with his free hand and slips it through Rebekah's, pulling her into the living room. Gently, he sets his present on the couch so he can kneel beneath the tree (still not letting go of Rebekah's hand) and pick up one for her. A square package, wrapped in silver paper. "Here. This is yours."

"Oh." She turns it over and over in her hand, watching the reflection of the tree, as distorted as it is.

He laughs, going to sit down on the couch and drawing her along with him. "Generally, the response to getting a present is 'thank you'."

Rebekah flushes and presses her lips together, glaring at him out of the corner of her eyes. "Thank you." It's so stiff he'd almost think she didn't mean it if he didn't know her.

"You're welcome."

They start talking, really talking, after a few minutes of silence. She tells him about the eighteen hundreds and he tells her about his parents and eventually, somehow, she ends up curled into his chest, their still-wrapped presents on the floor beside them, forgotten for the moment. His arms are around her waist and her head is tucked between his chin and his shoulder. The lights of the Christmas tree cover them, and eventually their breathing syncs up. Rebekha, Jeremy decides, understands Christmas perfectly.

_Thirteen._

It's six in the morning when she opens the door. She's doing her utmost not to make any noise, not to wake him. Really, she's a vampire, so that should be easy. It's a lot harder when Damon's hands are all over her just because he's standing behind her and he can.

"Shh!" Elena turns and stands on her tiptoes to give him a quick kiss, batting his hands away. "We don't want to wake Jeremy!"

For once, he acquiesces, allowing her to lead him quietly into the Gilbert house. The Christmas tree lights are on. Much as Elena loves them, she also doesn't want to burn the house down so she moves towards the living room to turn them off for a while. And freezes. "Damon?" she whispers, reaching back for her boyfriend.

He's by her side in an instant. "What is it?"

Elena just points. Jeremy's asleep on the couch. And there, half on top of him, half curled into his side, is Rebekah. Ice blue eyes are locked on them, and though she says nothing, it's perfectly clear that she has no problem restarting a feud if they so much as disturb Jeremy at all. Wincing, Elena grabs Damon's hand and sneaks upstairs with him. "What _was_ that?" she whispers.

He shrugs, just as confused and freaked out as she is. "I have no idea."

Down on the couch, Rebekah nuzzles back into Jeremy's chest. She'll leave. It's fine with her if he has Christmas with his family. That's the right thing to do. But until he wakes up, she'll stay. Because with him, she feels safe. Safe enough to close her eyes and go back to sleep. She knows he won't vanish if she doesn't watch him.

"Merry Christmas, Jeremy." _Thanks_.


End file.
